Finders Keepers (7 page)

“Because he’s probably some poltergeist following me around,
giving me a ghosty shove when I’m up there, and getting a good laugh in his
hereafter watching me eat dirt.” Will raised an eyebrow. “Because, okay? I
know.” He lifted his other brow, waiting. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

“Only about as stubborn as you are. But I’ve had fifty extra
years of experience, so don’t you think for a moment your stubbornness can
outdo mine. Older men than you have tried and failed.”

I got why Josie was such a fan of the eye roll when I was
around. Being around someone as bull-headed as me almost made me want to roll
my eyes. “The only thing Clay ever said to me that wasn’t insulting,
derogatory, or slurred in a drunken haze, was that men like him and me—men
without land or cattle or a lot of money—could only find glory one way.”

“Eight seconds on the back of a bull,” Will stated, no hint
of a question.

“The only kind of glory men like us could ever hope for.” I
dropped my hands on my hips and exhaled.

“Well, I can tell you what I think about that.”

“That it’s a whole load of shit?” I almost hoped Will would
say that. Then I’d know one other person in the world felt the same way. Most
of the time I accepted Clay’s glory axiom, but a few times—moments like those—I
wanted to believe it was the biggest, falsest load of shit to be spread.

Will’s hand clamped my shoulder. “That it’s a whole load of
sad
.
A person’s glory doesn’t come from trying not to fall off, but picking
themselves up when they do. That’s the measure of a person’s glory.” He headed
toward the end of the arena. Apparently his confounding work was done and he
was calling it a night.

Proverbial whiplash . . . why, yes, yes I am your most
recent bitch.
“So since I’m covered in a mixture of bull shit and mud, I
must be swimming in glory? Is that what you’re saying?” I called after him.

“You’re not swimming in glory until you find someone to swim
with you. Glory isn’t glory if you don’t have someone to share it with. It’s
just pride and bullshit on your own.”

Unbelievable. Will Jones wasn’t only one badass cowboy; he
pretty much could have been the love child of John Wayne and Yoda.

“I think I get why you married the crazy one!” I hollered.
“You needed someone to keep up with your special brand of it.”

Will glanced back for a second, tipped his hat, and kept
going.

And I thought the bull had fucked me up good.

IT WAS ANOTHER Thursday night, and
somehow I’d wound up with more bruises and dirt between my teeth than I had
last Thursday. The whole “things can only go up from here” concept hadn’t made
my acquaintance yet. I’d run out of pain reliever a few days earlier and had
yet to restock my supply, so I let half a bottle of whiskey have a go at it
instead.

My brain still felt like it wanted to burst out of my skull,
and the rest of my body felt like it had been tumble-dried with a load of rocks
and needles. To say I was in pain was like saying I was freezing. One of
Montana’s notorious cold snaps had set in, and my breath wasn’t just fogging—it
was about a degree away from crystalizing. The one positive to the frigid
temperatures was that it made my body numb, thus dulling the pain.

Who ever said I wasn’t a silver lining kind of guy?

I’d just burrowed down in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes
when a loud thump lurched me awake. The sound had come from behind me so, after
defogging the window, I gazed out to find the face I’d been trying for weeks to
forget about. I’d failed miserably.

“What the hell, Black?” Josie yelled, thumping the window
again with her mittened hands. “What the hell is this?”

So much for flying under the radar. Sighing, I cranked down
the window and stuck my head out of my truck. “I was in the middle of a sweet
dream, Joze.”

“That wasn’t a sweet dream, you idiot. That was your body
shutting down thanks to hypothermia.”

At that stage in my life, they were the same thing. “What
are you talking about? It’s balmy in here.” I hadn’t seen Josie so pissed in .
. . well . . . Actually, I’d never seen her that pissed.

“I bet. That must be why your nose looks like it’s about to
fall off.” She was bundled up in her knee-length down jacket, a hat and scarf
coving all of her face but her eyes. If I’d never seen her so pissed and
two-thirds of her face was hidden from view, she was close to going nuclear.
“You really are a bastard. You know that?” I was about halfway through my nod
of agreement when she narrowed her eyes even more somehow. “Your dad burns to
death, and his son freezes to death three months later. Isn’t that just a goddamned
fairy-tale ending?”

She sounded like she was just getting started, so I decided
to use the silence while she sucked in a breath. “Did I miss something? Why are
you acting like you want to hang me up by my toenails and skin me?”

“BECAUSE I DO!”

Even through my hat, that scream did some permanent damage
to my eardrums. “Mind explaining yourself before you scream me deaf?”

I hadn’t even said it with sarcasm, and she was glowering at
me like she was willing me to die on the spot. “You told me you were staying at
a friend’s place. You told me you were somewhere with a roof over your head,
with running water . . . with a kitchen . . .” Okay, she was starting to break.
As much as she was trying to fight them, a couple of tears surfaced in the
corners of her eyes. “You told me you were safe . . . and . . . and
warm
.”
She gestured at where I sat in my truck, close to breaking out in shivers. “And
here you are, camped out in your truck in front of your burnt out trailer in
the middle of negative degree temperatures. You lied to me, Garth. You
lied
to
me.” From the looks of it, there was no greater offense.

I had lied to her. Not because I’d wanted to tell Josie a
lie, but because I wanted to admit the truth much less. I’d been living out of
my truck for months on land I’d essentially been evicted from because I didn’t
want to burden anyone. I’d clearly been a burden on Clay all twenty-one years
of my life, and since I was free of him, I didn’t want to pass that burden
baton on to someone else. The Walkers or Josie especially. If I was going to be
a pain in the ass leech, I sure didn’t want it to be on one of my real friend’s
backsides.

“What do you want? An
I’m sorry
? Because I’m not.”
The only good thing about arguing with Josie was that it was heating me up.
Which brought my Thursday night war wounds back in all their throbbing glory.

“No. Screw
I’m sorry
. You owe me a hell of a lot more
than that after what you’ve been pulling the last couple months.” Grabbing the
door handle, Josie flung the door open. “You owe me the decency of getting out
of that ice box of a truck into mine, and then I’m taking you to my place. You
can thaw, eat a warm meal, and figure out what the hell to do next. Because
living out of your truck isn’t a viable long-term solution.”

I inhaled. “Let me make my answer to your suggestions sweet
and succinct.” I leaned across the seat until my face was in front of hers.
“No.”

Wrong thing to say. I saw the flash of something go through
her eyes that would have had me shaking in my boots if I had any on, and then
she grabbed my arms, dug in deep, and pulled. She didn’t stop pulling until my
sleeping bag and I had fallen in a heap at her feet. I was adding bruises on
top of bruises.

“Shit, Josie. What the hell was that for?”

“That was because I asked you once and I won’t ask again.”
Kneeling beside me, she pressed her face so close to mine our noses rubbed
together. “Get up and get in my truck. Now.”

“What is the matter?” I worked myself free of the sleeping
bag and grabbed my boots.

“You. That’s what’s the matter.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Care to expand on that?” I had to grit my teeth as I stood
because, on top of her finding me camped out in my truck in near Arctic
temperatures, I didn’t want her to know I was probably in need of yet another
E.R. visit.

“No, I do not. The only thing I care about right now is
getting you in my truck and taking you back to my place.”

I managed a weak crooked grin. “Now that’s what I’m talking
about.”

“Leave the dickhead here. I don’t care if that part of you
freezes to death.”

“I’m not leaving any part of my dick here to freeze.” I
stuffed the sleeping bag back in my truck before closing the door. I wasn’t in
the mood to argue with Josie, and I could almost feel the heat from her truck
cab.

“If you don’t stop being ‘cute’ with me, I’m going to knee
your entire dick all the way up into your throat.”

If I wasn’t a frozen, pulverized popsicle, Josie getting all
bossy probably would have turned me on. But really, being turned on was the
farthest thing from my mind right then. “Fine. You win.” I followed her as she
marched to her truck.

“Whoop-dee-doo. Look at my grand prize.” She glanced over
her shoulder long enough to run her eyes up and down me in a way that was the
opposite of approving. I couldn’t figure her out. She’d just threatened my
manhood if I refused to go with her, and I was. So why did she look about as
thrilled as if she’d just learned she had five minutes to live? Josie had never
been a tough one to read, at least not until the past couple of years. Lately,
she’d been like a faulty Rubik’s cube. There was no figuring her out, but that
didn’t stop me from wanting to take a crack at it.

As soon as I opened the passenger door, warm air rushed over
me. She had the heater cranked so high the cab was almost as warm as a sauna.
It felt so good I actually sighed. Crawling into her lifted truck took a little
effort, but as soon as I was seated, with the door closed and warm air
enveloping me, I could have fallen asleep in thirty seconds flat. Josie threw
herself into the driver’s seat, muttered a curse word I’d rarely heard her say,
and shot another death glare my way. For someone who’d seemed like they wanted
to help me, she sure changed her tune after I went along with it. Oh, well. It
was late, I was bushed, and all of the warm air was clouding my mind and making
me one heartbeat above comatose.

She pulled her downy mittens off, threw them at me, and
punched the gas. “I can’t believe you did that. You’ve done some crazy shit
since I’ve known you, but this is beyond your usual brand of crazy shit.” The
way the woman drove . . .

“Joze,” I said, my voice raspier than usual. Probably
because of the extreme temperature changes. “Buckle up.”

Her eyebrows came together. “Huh?” She was obviously so
worked up that my simple request wasn’t computing.

Reaching over her, I pulled the shoulder strap across her
body and clicked it into place. “Buckle up. The way you drive when you aren’t
certifiable is scary enough. I don’t need to lose another person.”

Josie blew out a breath. “Well you keep camping out in this
kind of weather, and you won’t have to worry about losing another person.
Because you’ll be dead.” She practically spat the last word at me.

“Okay, so back to the crazy shit bit you were saying
earlier”—I clicked my seatbelt into place, too—“I’m sorry. I’m not going to
pretend to understand why you’re so pissed at me, but I know you are. For that,
I’m sorry. Me doing what I do isn’t meant to make you so upset.” It was a vague
apology—I wasn’t quite sure what I was apologizing for exactly—but it was an
apology nonetheless. I issued one about as often as a lunar eclipse.

“You’re sorry about what exactly?”

Of course that would be her follow-up question. Burrowing
deeper into the seat, I cupped my hands over the heaters and planned my words
carefully.
Think before you speak
was something I reserved for times
like those. When Josie Gibson was at the wheel, hot on the heels of threatening
to knee my dick into the next county. “That I was camped out in my truck—”

“In Arctic temperatures,” she interjected.

I nodded. “In Arctic temperatures. I’m sorry for nearly
freezing myself into a popsicle-like state. But, you know, maybe if I was kept
frozen, I could come back a few hundred years later and—” Another look of death
stopped me mid-word. “I’m sorry for nearly freezing myself into a popsicle-like
death
. There. Is that better?”

“It’s a start, but you’ve got a lot to be sorry for, Garth
Black, so keep going.”

I’d rather eat my boot than apologize to just anyone . . .
but Josie wasn’t just anyone, so I sucked it up. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you where I’d been staying.”

She kept silent and gave me the
And?
look.

“And I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you and not returning your
calls . . .
but
I knew if you cornered me, you’d figure where I’d been
laying my head every night and you’d do something crazy like this.” I twirled
my finger around the cab. I’d also been avoiding her because that was the right
thing to do and my number one priority in life. Given her current state, I
didn’t think it best to go into how I needed to stay away from her for all
eternity.

Her only reply was that same expectant look. It seemed
And?
was the tone of things right then.

“And I’m sorry you had to come out in this weather in the
middle of the night to look for me.” I still didn’t know why she had or how
long she’d been looking before making it to my truck, but again, that wasn’t
the time to clarify. The more apologies I made, the angrier she seemed to get.
Either I was missing something, or she was. Like her sanity.

“And I’m sorry you had to dry up an entire oil field from
the amount of gas you went through driving from your place to mine?” Yes, my
apologies were starting to tip more the smart-ass scale than the genuine one,
but I was running out of ideas.

She gripped the steering wheel so hard, her knuckles
blanched white. Okay, what was I missing? What kind of an apology was Josie
waiting for? Sure, over the span of the fifteen years we’d known each other, I
had a whole universe of things to apologize to her for, but right then, what
was the apology she was looking for after I’d lied to her about where I was
staying?

Ah, yep, that was it. Since my eardrums were still ringing
after she’d gone off about being lied to, I had a good idea what she was
waiting for. I twisted so I could look her straight on. “I’m sorry I lied to
you, Joze.”

Her anger melted off, one layer at a time, until the face of
the girl I was used to came back. It took a moment, but when Josie’s eyes
flashed to mine, I knew the screaming and glaring was past. At least for my
latest offense.

“So? Am I forgiven?” I dropped my hand on her shoulder and
gave it a gentle squeeze. Even though she had on a cushion of down and fleece,
the touch still felt intimate. More intimate than I’d expected, and too
intimate for the distance I needed to keep between us. I dropped my hand and
made a note not to touch her again if I could help it.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she replied matter-of-factly,
making me chuckle.

“Well what more do I need to say or do to get you closer to
a decision?”

She gnawed her lip for a few seconds. “Just try to explain,
get me to understand why . . .
why
you’d rather camp out inside your
truck than stay with one of your friends. Because that makes no sense to me.
None. Actually, as far as sense goes, that makes, like, negative sense.”